Ah, perfectionism. The greatest hindrance and the greatest motivator. In the microcosm of my brain, writing anything - emails, Instagram captions, text messages, not to mention blog posts are the equivalent of stumbling upon a grizzly bear in the forest without bear spray or any training whatsoever for what to do when encountering a bear in the forest. So many unknowns! So much anxiety! But whatever you do, don't run! (Right? You're not supposed to run, right? Oh dear...)

'Why does it have to be so difficult?' I ask myself almost daily. And the answer (which I forget with regularity) is my old frenemy perfectionism. I'm really scared, guys, of saying the wrong thing! Or worse, saying something inaccurate! Or revealing that I'm a standard-issue flawed human being! And worse still, of my wrong/incorrect/human words being permanent on the interwebs and readable by anyone. Aaaaaaah!

But seriously. This is why this 'prose' page has only a few posts from a few years ago. So many pesky little fears!

If there's one thing I've learned from my practice as an artist, it's practice. Perhaps surprisingly, I lose confidence in my artistic skills quite often, but when I pick up my pencil to start a drawing, I find that I really do know how to draw and, well, if I can draw then I can probably paint too. The conscious act of doing, rather than waiting for that often elusive moment of inspiration or confident ability, is when real beauty happens.

So I'm hoping that the practice of writing will yield similar results. While I'm not expecting to create any kind of masterpiece here - you can see those under 'paintings' ;) ;) - I do hope to open a window for you to peer into my quiet, sometimes neurotic, hopefully a little funny, artistic world. And if you ever find that window shut - please, do tap on the glass, and I'll do my best to remind my perfectionism to behave itself, and pry the window open again.